Fixing the Korg Pandora PX5D

Seems quite a few otherwise happy PX5D owners have nasty trouble with the input jack cutting out. Not an uncommon problem on the discussion fora.

If, and only if...your Pandora is out of warranty, there's some fixes you can try. (And never try to fix anything unless you're willing to face the fact that one wrong move and you have a nice Korg doorstop. AKA, it's always possible to brick these things. You been warned.)

Some folks have gone in and re-tensioned the jack contacts a bit. In my case, I found a bad wire run from the jack to the PCB where the wires were badly fatigued during factory assembly. Simple enough to poke around inside with a chopstick till you find the loose bit that's causing the problems.

But how do you get these dang things apart?

Basically, they come in three sections that slide together...that sturdy metal casing does not split in half...it slides. But of course the slidey part has a catch to it, so here's the drill...

Obviously you're going to remove the two screws you can see from the outside, easy enough. Next you'll need to slide the plastic battery liner out from the back. Notice in the pic you have a little snap-dog that holds the liner in place once installed. (Yellow arrow. below) From the battery compartment, you can press these two dogs open with a fine screwdriver, and the battery liner will release. Pull it out the back.

Bet you guessed you're going to slide the PCB and control fascia assembly out the front, right? Great...except all those buttons and the data wheel and the select pad stick up through the casing so you can't slide the PCB out. Right by the front fascia they stuck a spring in there, see pic below. All you do is lightly press down on the PCB assembly and all those controls slide neatly under the control deck...the PCB slides right out.

You'll see you have not one, but two PCB's, stacked atop each other. You'll have to pull the top one to get the input jack out. Undo the two screws at the back of the PCB...they're Phillips size #1. (Red arrow right by the yellow arrow in pic #3, above)

No pic cuz it's really hard to shoot, but look in between the back of the boards, and note that there's a little white multi-pin connector in the middle of the back edge. (It's just under the tail of the red arrow in pic #3, right next to the back edges of the PCBs.) The two halves of the connector simply pop together and apart. Lift gently and separate the two halves of the connector. You're almost home.

Next obstacle is the data wheel. One half of the axle is anchored in the chassis, and the other half is anchored in the PCB...natch. You'll find that you can't simply pull the PCB's apart, as there isn't room for the data wheel to release both halves of the axle. Just get it angle-wise and you'll have enough play to slide it to one side and get it clear.

Those three things done, you can lift the upper circuit board clear of the lower one, taking care to clear the USB connector from its bracket. And with that, at long last you have the room to slide both the input and output jacks loose to examine them.

As you may expect, the villains are usually the moving parts...the positive (tip) connector in the jack, the negative (sleeve) contacts,and the itty-bitty wires that connect them to the PCB. A bit of poking around revealed a bad joint in my little green wire, so I simply re-soldered the connection having bared some healthy wire, and the Pandora was good to go.

To put the Pandora back together, reverse the steps above. When you try to put the upper and lower circuit boards back together, be sure to line up the little slide switches on the PCB with the notches on the back of the control panel switch covers. Easy to see, just move the switch covers to match the switches themselves, the PCB lines up just right.

When you get to the spring, you'll go nuts trying to hold it down with a screwdriver. But you have room to just tuck in it there with your fingernail if you're careful...or go get the SO to do it with those Candy Cadillac Red claws. Follow the steps backwards from there , and go light your headsets on fire.

Nice repair shots of the Pandora. Thanks a lot. I could follow it completely and fix a few problems, as with the output/input jacks and value encoder or data wheel.

However, when assembling it back the LCD was gone when firing it up again!

Of course, the other things where fixed, and there was sound, and all switches/wheels worked again.

It did lit up but no text. I de-assembled it again to see what it was but couldn't open the last, or second FCB board as the button that changes the program (whatever that's called) to the left of the LCD (when looking at a unit from above and front, i e a new unit) was sort of underneath the shield and that fcb board can't be removed without that button be removed first. The FCB board is stuck. I did see a white piece of paper underneath, that was a bit loose and off, that was all I could see. Maybe the screws where too tightened?

I tried not tightening the screw as much as to ruin the LCD to no avail. Had to de-assemble it again. Now I am am expert in disassembling/assembling the unit. First round, took half a hour, next round 5 minutes.